Whereas, the majority (26.4 percent) of providers advertising aesthetic surgery services on Instagram are not boarded certified-plastic surgeons and included dermatologists, general surgeons, gynecologists, who marketed themselves as cosmetic surgeons. Another 5.5 percent were non-physicians, including dentists, spas with no associated physician and a hair salon. “Providers — ranging from physicians who are not licensed in plastic surgery to dentists, hair salon employees, and barbers — are doing procedures for which they do not have formal or extensive training. That’s extremely dangerous for the patient,” said lead author Robert Dorfman, a medical student at Northwestern University in Illinois, US.

The ads particularly affect young people, who increasingly want to improve their appearance for Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media channels, but often do not understand who is qualified to perform procedures, the researchers said, adding that “this is a very scary finding”. ALSO READ: Snapchat may overtake Facebook, Instagram in the US

“The blood vessel supply in the body is very intricate. If you accidentally inject something into a vein and it then goes into your lungs, it can kill you,” Dorfman added. For the study, published in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal, the team examined a total of 1,789,270 posts which utilized 21 plastic surgery-related hashtags on Instagram.